Apple Looks to Bully HTC With Third ITC Complaint, HTC Abandons Offense

From DailyTech: As far as the U.S. International Trade Commission is concerned, the fight between Taiwanese Android phonemaker HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) and U.S. phonemaker Apple, Inc. (AAPL) is now officially a one-sided scrap, with Apple looking to pick on its smaller rival.

HTC completed its acquisition of S3 Graphics, which it bought largely due to hope of gaining leverage against Apple (S3 Graphics briefly won a complaint against Apple, but later saw its victory evaporate post-acquisition). HTC is now essentially entirely on the defensive after it decided to drop its appeal of the ITC's decision to reject its own complaint against Apple (parallel to S3 Graphics', but also rejected) in February. Initially, HTC indicated it might appeal, but it now has decided to focus on playing defense.

Apple, which is much more profitable and reportedly employs a much larger legal team, convinced the ITC to rule in its favor last December, finding that certain HTC handsets infringed upon U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a "System and Method for Performing an Action on a Structure Computer-Generated Data".

The patent is commonly shortened to the '647 patent or referred to as the "data-tapping" patent, given that it covers converting text to actionable links. Apple’s Advanced Technology Group developed the patent in the mid-1990s. At the time smartphones weren't even on the drawing board -- the patent was on how to make text into links that could be launched in multiple browsers.

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